Читать книгу Heartfruit - Ingrid Wolfaardt - Страница 10

The phone rings, two short and one long. Isak gets up and opens the window for the owl. It rings again in the kitchen. The owl sits on the headboard, ears twitching, stretching its wings over the bed.

“Going out to party, Skatlam?”

The bird hops onto Isak’s arm. Carefully, he lifts a wing, poking with his fingers to feel the wound in the soft flesh, but it has healed, only a scab indicating where the wing was torn. The generator and lights of the kitchen come on. He walks onto the stoep with the owl, listening.

“Ja, ja, I hear it all …” His father rings off. “Swartskoen se moer,” is all he says as the house darkens again and the generator cuts off. The owl takes flight over the garden. There is no moon. The Milky Way hangs as a ribbon of light in the sky over the hills, where he finds the Southern Cross and the three sisters.

The bottle of beer is still in the hydrangea bush. He fishes it out and tries to open it on the edge of the stoep. Behind him the back door opens and Danie peers out, wrapped in Ouma’s blanket.

“Boetie, who phoned Pappa?” he whispers.

“The swartskoene.”

“Why do they phone Pappa so late?”

“Because they meet at midnight when it’s dark moon and they drink each other’s blood while they decide who’ll be their next victim.” He bares his teeth. “Vampires, all of them.”

Danie joins him, his body still soft and hairless. “Isn’t. Oom Frans is a swartskoen, not a vampire.”

Isak shrugs, hitting the lid off with a stone. “He wears a black-tailed suit to meetings just like Count Dracula.”

“Pappa says that Dominee is one and Mr De Jager the woodwork teacher from school and almost everyone who works at the co-op. Pappa told Mamma, so it’s the truth.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.” The lid shoots off. Isak presses the foaming liquid to his mouth.

“Just a spoegie.”

Isak passes on the bottle.

“Is swartskoen the same as swartgevaar?” Danie looks puzzled.

“No.” Isak sees the handsome face of the black trouble maker in the folded up newspaper. “Swartskoen is the Nats and swartgevaar is the kaffirs.” He takes a deep swig from the bottle.

“What are we?”

Isak shrugs.“Bloedsappe I suppose. Oupa voted for the oom on the photo with the pointy beard, the one on the wall of the office, but he has been dead for ages.”

“And Pappa?”

“Nothing, Pappa doesn’t vote for anyone.”

The owl returns, ignoring Isak’s outstretched hand. It lands in the deltoidia, with a mouse in its claws. The bird pulls and picks, piece by piece, dropping the stomach nonchalantly onto the grass below.

“Won’t it be better for Pappa to be a swartskoen as well?” Danie yawns and snuggles closer.

“You’re a Nat, Sap or a communist for life. Pappa is none of those.”

* * *

Isak parts the bushes. The mouse is alive, trembling, with the thin metal catch caught across its front paws. He lifts it up by the tail, holding it out to the owl on his arm. As the owl lifts off, it snatches viciously at the mouse, its wings closing over the boy’s head, darkening the sun for a split second. He moves onto the other traps, only collecting the mice that still live, barely hearing the phone ringing in the kitchen, two short and one long ring, again and again and again. He pretends not to hear it as he carries the bag of mice up the hill to the house.

The phone stops ringing abruptly, in the middle of its cycle.

His mother stands in the kitchen with the telephone cord in her hand, ripped from the wall.

“Mamma?”

“Pappa’s looking for you,” is all she says, rolling up the cord, dropping it into the pocket of her apron.

He runs down to the office as fast as he can to where his father sits in the Holden bakkie, smoking and shouting though the open window. His father wears a tweed jacket and a tie, just like he always does when he goes to town, and his moustache is trimmed in a perfect line.

“Climb.”

Isak jumps on the back, counting the markers alongside the road, sticking out his tongue into the wind, wondering when the threats will stop now that the phone is dead.

His father parks in front of the co-op’s main door. Men stand in a small circle at the entrance with cups of tea, drinking and talking politics. First his father climbs out, then Isak follows, dawdling behind him across the parking lot to the group of men who pause in their conversation. Oom Frans is one. He sticks out his hand in greeting but the other men hold onto their cups, hats pulled low over their brows. His father passes Oom Frans’s hand, nodding a general greeting before walking through the revolving door.

The feed is sold at the back. Volk with strips of cloth around their heads carry the feed on their backs, out to the bakkies. Oom Soppas shouts a number and a threat to the men. “Bloedbek, bloedbek.”

The volk look too small for the large bags they carry. Oom Soppas’ daughter sits with a book writing up the orders. His father teases her, laughing aloud and she flushes red behind the glass.

“Baas, Baas, the bakkie.” The man loading the feed runs in, with arms waving.

Isak runs ahead of his father. The parking lot is deserted. The windscreen of the Holden is smashed. Inside on the seat lies a brick. All the tea drinkers have left.

Oom Soppas curses the man. “Hotnot, today you’re in deep shit.”

But it’s not the man’s fault, Isak wants to say, not his fault at all.

* * *

There’s a fight and the phone’s cord is replaced. The calls begin again, over and over, every night disturbed by the endless two short and one long ring but Isak no longer gets up. He sleeps through them all. And his father no longer answers, as the calls are all the same, threats from men in high places.

“Johan, drop it.”

“The damn factory is rotten from its head down.”

His mother and father smoke on the back stoep, speaking softly.

The owl cocks its head.

“Please, it’s not worth it, to place your farm on the line as though it’s a game, and for what?”

“While there are men who back me, I’m still in.”

“You can only lose.”

Isak pulls himself up. Her silhouette is slim like that of a young girl, her feet bunioned from the peep-toe stilettos. She holds the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger the way Raatjie used to do at the washing line. His father’s voice hardens as he walks out onto the lawn, his back to her. Then he turns to her. “The election is in two days and I’m keeping to my word.”

The phone rings in the kitchen. “For God’s sake, don’t answer,” she pleads.

“The volk will have to spray tonight. Rain is on its way.”

“They’ll crucify you.” Her voice lifts.

“Enough!” He walks to the phone.

Isak strains to hear.

“Things still right for Thursday?”

The reply is short.

“I see.”

There are no goodbyes. His father slams down the phone. The owl is restless as the back door flies open. Isak watches his mother mouth words as his father grabs Oupa’s kierie, whistling for the dogs. But there are no more dogs on the farm.

It is not long before they hear the tractor in the werf and the whirring sound of the sprayer dispensing insecticide over the orchards. He can smell the poison right here in his room on the back stoep.

“Mamma?”

She comes to the window and there are lines dragging down from the corners of her mouth to her chin. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Ou Bruine wants to hunt but Mamma needs to go inside.”

“I wish I was an owl.” There’s a bitterness on her breath as she sweeps her hand over his hair. Her touch is cold.

She strolls over the lawn out by the back gate into the veld and he cannot see her any more. He waits up for her but she doesn’t return, not that way anyway.

* * *

His father dresses in his Sunday best. He goes to the election for the new board of directors of the co-op. The new boardroom is panelled in yellow wood, from trees that once grew in the mountain pass. His father’s supporters stay away, every one of them, too busy farming to vote. His father comes home from the election with dust on the hubcaps and dust on his shoes.

“Gone,” is all he says, taking the kierie but this time he heads for the mountains.

His mother takes to her room for a very long time.